‘Wilding’ Review
A Remarkable Work On How To Turn A Planet In Peril Into A Flourishing World
Film: Wilding. Year: 2024. Genre: Documentary. Director: David Allen
Every year, more and more mammals face worldwide extinction. While it’s sadly a global phenomenon, it’s even worse in the English countryside. The amount of wildlife has been decreasing rapidly, resulting in a depleted world for both nature and animals. However, according to David Allen and Isabelle Tree, there’s still hope. In Allen’s film Wilding, we are shown how Tree’s rewilding experiment (the biggest in Europe) can ensure that nature can recover by itself if we let it.
Isabelle Tree — what a fitting and fantastic name for someone breathing new life into nature — and her husband, Charlie Knepp, have inherited a large estate with vast land. This inheritance would be the dream of every gardener, or anyone who wants to give nature a helping hand. That is, if it wasn’t for the dire and bare state of the 350-acre Knepp estate. The farm has been jam-packed with dangerous substances by its former owner(s), resulting in an impenetrable and ruined land. For many of us, turning this land into rich ground sounds like a lost cause, but Tree’s determination, perseverance and infectious passion is unreal.
